'This is where we must go'

 

“I try for a poetic language that says, ‘This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do.’” – Mari Evans

 

Born in Toledo, Ohio on this date in 1923, Evans was and remains one of America’s most influential Black writers, authoring poetry, children’s literature and plays, and editing countless works of others.  She also edited the definitive and award-winning Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation. 

 

Evans, who died in 2017, attended the University of Toledo and taught at Purdue and Cornell.  In 1968 she wrote AND produced the award-winning television program, “The Black Experience.”   Her poem “Who Can Be Born Black” – often anthologized – was part of the collection Where Is All the Music? and established her as a major poetic writer.  Then her collection, I Am a Black Woman, earned her worldwide acclaim.

 

I Am A Black Woman not only resonated with the power and beauty of Black women but set the bar for many of her fellow female Black writers in the latter part of the 20th century.  

 

“I am a black woman,” Evans wrote, “tall as a cypress, strong beyond all definition, still defying place and time and circumstance, assailed, impervious, indestructible.”